The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
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List of the most influential people in Mathematics,
#10601
Luigi Poletti
1864 - 1967 (103 years)
Luigi Poletti was an Italian mathematician and poet. He was born in Pontremoli, where he also died, age 102. He attended the episcopal seminary in Potremoli, then the high school of Parma, graduated in Turin and started to study mathematics there. He did not finish and took a job in a bank. 1911 he accidentally found the book of prime number tables written by Lehmer, a mathematician from the United States in the house of professor Gino Loria, a friend of his family, when he visited Genoa. Since then he spent many years to extend the first table in order to simplify "Eratosthenes Crivello" , a method from ancient Greece to find prime numbers.
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Kazimierz Cwojdziński
1878 - 1948 (70 years)
Kazimierz Cwojdziński was a Polish mathematician and professor of the School of Engineering in Poznań. Cwojdziński published his works regarding secondary school curriculum and school mathematics in the journals Wiadomości Matematyczne, Muzeum, Parametr, and Matematyka as well as the German journal Archiv der Mathematik und Physik. He was among the first year-group to obtain a doctorate in mathematics from the Adam Mickiewicz University.
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Johannes Knoblauch
1855 - 1915 (60 years)
Johannes Knoblauch was a German mathematician. Biography Johannes Knoblauch, whose father was the physics professor Karl Hermann Knoblauch, studied law, mathematics and physics from 1872 in Halle, Heidelberg and Berlin. At the Friedrich Wilhelm University he studied from 1874 to 1878 and from 1880 to 1883 and received his Promotion in 1882 and his Habilitation in 1883. His doctoral dissertation "Ueber die Allgemeine Wellenfläche" was supervised by Karl Weierstrass. Knoblauch was a teacher for the academic year 1878–1879 at the state Gymnasium in Halle and from 1879 to 1880 at Berlin's Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster.
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John Caswell
1650 - 1712 (62 years)
John Caswell was an English mathematician who served as Savilian Professor of Astronomy at the University of Oxford from 1709 until his death. Life and career John Caswell , was from Crewkerne, Somerset, and he matriculated at Wadham College, Oxford, in March 1671 when he was 16 years old. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1674 and his Master of Arts in 1677. He was a pupil of John Wallis, Savilian Professor of Geometry from 1649 until his death in 1703. He worked with the cartographer John Adams on the survey of England and Wales that Adams began in the late 17th century. In 1709, he became Savilian Professor of Astronomy, and also served as vice-principal of Hart Hall, Oxford.
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John Farrar
1779 - 1853 (74 years)
John Farrar was an American scholar. He first coined the concept of hurricanes as “a moving vortex and not the rushing forward of a great body of the atmosphere”, after the Great September Gale of 1815. Farrar remained Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard University between 1807 and 1836. During this time, he introduced modern mathematics into the curriculum. He was also a regular contributor to the scientific journals.
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Johann Hommel
1518 - 1562 (44 years)
Johann Hommel was a German astronomer and mathematician. Work Hommel was appointed professor of mathematics at the University of Leipzig in 1551. In 1552 or 1553, Richard Cantzlar introduced transversal dot lines in graduations. It was a variant of the zigzag line system introduced by Hommel. Tycho Brahe obtained the zigzag line system from Hommel.
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Christian Wiener
1826 - 1896 (70 years)
Ludwig Christian Wiener was a German mathematician who specialized in descriptive geometry. Wiener was also a physicist and philosopher. In 1863, he was the first person to identify qualitatively the internal molecular cause of Brownian motion.
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Elling Holst
1849 - 1915 (66 years)
Elling Bolt Holst was a Norwegian mathematician, biographer and children's writer. Early and personal life Holst was born in Drammen, Norway. He was a son of bookseller Adolph Theodor Holst and Amalie Fredrikke Bergh. He was a grandson of merchant and politician, member of the Storting, Elling Mathias Holst .
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Lorna Swain
1891 - 1936 (45 years)
Lorna Mary Swain was a British mathematician and college lecturer, known for being one of few female mathematicians to contribute their talents to the war effort in World War I, and for being one of few early female lecturers at University of Cambridge. Academically, she is known for her work in fluid dynamics as well as her deep desire to see more women pursue higher education and teaching in the field of mathematics.
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Arthur Hirsch
1866 - 1948 (82 years)
Arthur Hirsch was a German mathematician. Life and work Hirsch completed his schooling in Königsberg in 1882 and then studied mathematics and physics in the universities of Berlin and Königsberg. Among his teachers at Königsberg were David Hilbert and Adolf Hurwitz. In 1892 he received a doctorate from Königsberg for a thesis about linear differential equations.
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Wilhelm Ahrens
1872 - 1927 (55 years)
Wilhelm Ahrens was a German mathematician and writer on recreational mathematics. Biography Ahrens was born in Lübz at the Elde in Mecklenburg and studied from 1890 to 1897 at the University of Rostock, Humboldt University of Berlin, and the University of Freiburg. In 1895 at the University of Rostock he received his Promotion , summa cum laude, under the supervision of Otto Staude with dissertation entitled Über eine Gattung n-fach periodischer Functionen von n reellen Veränderlichen. From 1895 to 1896 he taught at the German school in Antwerp and then studied another semester under Sophus Lie in Leipzig.
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Carl Fabian Björling
1839 - 1910 (71 years)
Carl Fabian Emanuel Björling was a Swedish mathematician and meteorologist. Life He was born on 30 November 1839 in Västerås, Sweden, and died on 6 May 1910. He was the son of mathematician Emanuel Björling and father of lawyer Carl Georg Björling.
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Luca Valerio
1553 - 1618 (65 years)
Luca Valerio was an Italian mathematician. He developed ways to find volumes and centers of gravity of solid bodies using the methods of Archimedes. He corresponded with Galileo Galilei and was a member of the Accademia dei Lincei.
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Charles de Bovelles
1479 - 1567 (88 years)
Charles de Bovelles was a French mathematician and philosopher, and canon of Noyon. His Géométrie en françoys was the first scientific work to be printed in French. Bovelles authored a number of philological, theological and mystical treatises, and has been reckoned to be "perhaps the most remarkable French thinker of the 16th century."
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Arima Yoriyuki
1714 - 1783 (69 years)
Arima Yoriyuki was a Japanese mathematician of the Edo period. He was the lord of Kurume Domain. He approximated the value of and its square, correct to 29 digits: Further reading
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Thomas Bartholin
1616 - 1680 (64 years)
Thomas Bartholin was a Danish physician, mathematician, and theologian. He discovered the lymphatic system in humans and advanced the theory of refrigeration anesthesia, being the first to describe it scientifically.
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Moritz Allé
1837 - 1913 (76 years)
Moritz Allé was an Austrian astronomer and mathematician, one of the teachers of Nikola Tesla. Scientific career After his university graduation, Allé startet his professional career as an assistant at the Vienna Observatory in 1856. He was appointed Adjunkt at the observatory in Kraków in 1859. In 1860 he completed his PhD at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel. In 1862 he was appointed Adjunkt at the observatory in Prague. It was there where he completed his habilitation in mathematics in 1863. In 1867, Allé was appointed professor of mathematics at the Joanneum in Graz and was elected as its rector in 1875/76.
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Robert Leroy Mercer
#10619
Ezechiel de Decker
1603 - 1643 (40 years)
Ezechiel de Decker was a Dutch surveyor and teacher of mathematics. Tables of logarithms In 1625, De Decker entered a contract with Adriaan Vlacq for the publication of several translations of books by John Napier, Edmund Gunter and Henry Briggs. A first book was published in 1626, with several translations done by Vlacq. A second book was made of the logarithms of the first 10000 numbers from Briggs' Arithmetica logarithmica published in 1624. The logarithms were shortened to 10 places. In 1627, De Decker's "Tweede deel" was published and it contained the logarithms of all numbers from 1 to 100000, to 10 places.
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Phillips Brooks
1835 - 1893 (58 years)
Phillips Brooks was an American Episcopal clergyman and author, long the Rector of Boston's Trinity Church and briefly Bishop of Massachusetts. He wrote the lyrics of the Christmas hymn, "O Little Town of Bethlehem".
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Donald Sadler
1908 - 1987 (79 years)
Donald Harry Sadler was an English astronomer and mathematician who developed an international reputation for his work in preparing astronomical and navigational almanacs. He worked as the Superintendent of His Majesty's Nautical Almanac Office from 1937 to 1971.
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Heinrich Schotten
1856 - 1939 (83 years)
Heinrich Georg Leonhard Schotten was a German mathematician and mathematical pedagogue, known for his work on reforms in the teaching of geometry. Schotten was a Gymnasium student in Marburg and in Leipzig and studied from 1876 to 1882 in Leipzig, Breslau, Berlin and Marburg with teaching qualification via state examination in Marburg in 1882 and with doctorate in 1883. His dissertation has the title Über einige bemerkenswerte Gattungen der Hypocycloiden. After completing his doctorate, he spent a probationary year in Kassel as a Gymnasium teacher. He was employed as a Gymnasium teacher in Bad Hersfeld, Schmalkalden and Kassel .
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William John Greenstreet
1861 - 1930 (69 years)
William John Greenstreet was an English mathematician who was editor of The Mathematical Gazette for more than thirty years. Life and work Greenstreet was son of a Royal Artillery's Sergeant. He was educated at Southwark and he entered St John's College, Cambridge in 1879, graduating there in 1883. Then he was mathematics professor in different schools in Framlingham, East Riding and Cardiff before he became Head Master at Marling School in 1891. In 1910 he retired to Burghfield Common with the intention of devoting to literary work.
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Dario Graffi
1905 - 1990 (85 years)
Dario Graffi was an influential Italian mathematical physicist, known for his researches on the electromagnetic field, particularly for a mathematical explanation of the Luxemburg effect, for proving an important uniqueness theorem for the solutions of a class of fluid dynamics equations including the Navier-Stokes equation, for his researches in continuum mechanics and for his contribution to oscillation theory.
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Friedrich Otto Rudolf Sturm
1841 - 1919 (78 years)
Friedrich Otto Rudolf Sturm was a German mathematician. His Ph.D. advisor was Heinrich Eduard Schroeter, and Otto Toeplitz was one of his Ph.D. students. His best ever proposal type claim is commonly known as "Sturm's Theorem" based on finding the complex imaginary roots of an infinite arbitrary-integer series.
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Enoch Beery Seitz
1846 - 1883 (37 years)
Enoch Beery Seitz was an American mathematician who was Chair of Mathematics at North Missouri State Normal School Seitz was elected to the London Mathematical Society on 11 March 1880, only the fifth American to be so honored. Over 500 of his solutions were published in the Analyst, the Mathematical Visitor, the Mathematical Magazine, the School Visitor and the Educational Times of London, England.
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Peder Horrebow
1679 - 1764 (85 years)
Peder [Nielsen] Horrebow was a Danish astronomer. Born in Løgstør, Jutland to a poor family of fishermen, Horrebow entered the University of Copenhagen in 1703. He worked his way through grammar school and university by virtue of his technical knowledge: he repaired mechanical and musical instruments and cut seals. He received his MA from the university in 1716, and his MD in 1725. From 1703 to 1707, he served as an assistant to Ole Rømer and lived in Rømer's home. He worked as a household tutor from 1707 to 1711 to a Danish baron, and entered the governmental bureaucracy as an excise w...
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Isaac Sir Newton
#10629
William Ernest Henley
1849 - 1903 (54 years)
William Ernest Henley was an English poet, writer, critic and editor. Though he wrote several books of poetry, Henley is remembered most often for his 1875 poem "Invictus". A fixture in London literary circles, the one-legged Henley might have been the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's character Long John Silver , while his young daughter Margaret Henley inspired J. M. Barrie's choice of the name Wendy for the heroine of his play Peter Pan .
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Karl Reinhardt
1895 - 1941 (46 years)
Karl August Reinhardt was a German mathematician whose research concerned geometry, including polygons and tessellations. He solved one of the parts of Hilbert's eighteenth problem, and is the namesake of the Reinhardt polygons.
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Norman H. Anning
1883 - 1963 (80 years)
Norman Herbert Anning was a mathematician, assistant professor, professor emeritus, and instructor in mathematics, recognized and acclaimed in mathematics for publishing a proof of the characterization of the infinite sets of points in the plane with mutually integer distances, known as the Erdős–Anning theorem.
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Jacques Callot
1592 - 1635 (43 years)
Jacques Callot was a baroque printmaker and draftsman from the Duchy of Lorraine . He is an important person in the development of the old master print. He made more than 1,400 etchings that chronicled the life of his period, featuring soldiers, clowns, drunkards, Gypsies, beggars, as well as court life. He also etched many religious and military images, and many prints featured extensive landscapes in their background.
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Antonio Collalto
1765 - 1820 (55 years)
Antonio Collalto was an Italian mathematician and physicist. Life He was from a modest and otherwise unrecorded family. According to Emmanuele Antonio Cicogna, his surname did not indicate a connection with the house of Collalto but instead his status as a Jewish convert to Catholicism in his youth. He was unable to study at the Patriarchal Seminary of Venice, run by the Somaschi Fathers, and gained a scientific education from the physicist Vincenzo Miotti. He completed his studies and then became a priest. In 1795 he became professor of maths and physics in the public schools of Venice. In 1...
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Diego Rodríguez
1569 - 1668 (99 years)
Diego Rodríguez was a mathematician, astronomer, educator, and technological innovator in New Spain. He was one of the most important figures in the scientific field in the colony in the second half of the seventeenth century.
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Arthur Herbert Copeland
1898 - 1970 (72 years)
Arthur Herbert Copeland was an American mathematician. He graduated from Harvard University in 1926 and taught at Rice University and the University of Michigan. His main interest was in the foundations of probability.
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Johannes Valentinus Andreae
1586 - 1654 (68 years)
Johannes Valentinus Andreae , a.k.a. Johannes Valentinus Andreä or Johann Valentin Andreae, was a German theologian, who claimed to be the author of an ancient text known as the Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz anno 1459 . This became one of the three founding works of Rosicrucianism, which was both a legend and a fashionable cultural phenomenon across Europe in this period.
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Pierre Simon Marquis De Laplace
#10638
James Cagney
1899 - 1986 (87 years)
James Francis Cagney Jr. was an American actor, dancer and film director. On stage and in film, he was known for his consistently energetic performances, distinctive vocal style, and deadpan comic timing. He won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances.
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John Bell
1812 - 1895 (83 years)
John Bell was a British sculptor, born in Bell's Row, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. His family home was Hopton Hall, Suffolk. His works were shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851, and he was responsible for the marble group representing "America" on the Albert Memorial in London.
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Eugene P. Northrop
1908 - 1969 (61 years)
Eugene P. Northrop was an American research mathematician and a math popularizer. Northrop received his PhD from Yale University in 1934 with thesis advisor Einar Hille. Northrop held the William Rainey Harper Chair of Mathematics at the University of Chicago, and frequently served in administrative roles and on technical commissions. He is most remembered for his 1944 book Riddles in Mathematics, which was well-received by the mathematical community and remains in print as a Dover book .
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Hiroshi Okamura
1905 - 1948 (43 years)
Hiroshi Okamura was a Japanese mathematician who made contributions to analysis and the theory of differential equations. He was a professor at Kyoto University. He discovered the necessary and sufficient conditions on initial value problems of ordinary differential equations for the solution to be unique. He also refined the second mean value theorem of integration.
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Alf Victor Guldberg
1866 - 1936 (70 years)
Alf Victor Emanuel Guldberg was a Norwegian mathematician. His father was Axel Sophus Guldberg and his aunt was Cathinka Guldberg. Alf Guldberg received in 1892 his Ph.D. and became in that year a privatdocent at the University of Oslo. In 1913 he became a professor there. He also taught at the Norwegian Military Academy and the Norwegian Military College.
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Robert William Genese
1848 - 1928 (80 years)
Robert William Genese was an Irish mathematician whose career was spent in Wales. Early life and education Genese was born on Westland Row a street on the south side of Dublin on 8 May 1848. From St John's College of the University of Cambridge, Genese received in 1871 his bachelor's degree and in 1874 his master's degree.
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François Nau
1864 - 1931 (67 years)
François Nau was a French Catholic priest, mathematician, Syriacist, and specialist in oriental languages. He published a great number of eastern Christian texts and translations for the first and often only time.
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Adolf Kiefer
1857 - 1929 (72 years)
Adolf Kiefer was a Swiss mathematician, working mainly on geometry. Life Kiefer was born in 1857 in Selzach, Switzerland to Jakob, a farmer, village mayor and member of Solothurn parliament. In 1880 he graduated as a teacher of mathematics and physics. He taught, from 1881-2, at the Concordia Institute, in Zürich. Kiefer's 1881 doctorate was from the University of Zürich for the thesis Der Kontakt höherer Ordnung bei algebraischen Flächen. Between 1882 and 1894 he taught geometry and technical drawing at the canton school in Frauenfeld, becoming deputy head in 1886 and head in 1888. In 1894 he became director of the Concordia Institute.
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Petrus Bertius
1565 - 1629 (64 years)
Petrus Bertius was a Flemish philosopher, theologian, historian, geographer and cartographer. Bertius published much in mathematics, and historical and theological works, but he is now best known as cartographer with his edition of the Geographia of Ptolemy , and for its atlas.
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Alexander Myller
1879 - 1965 (86 years)
Alexander Myller was a Romanian mathematician and professor at the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași.
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George Richard Crooks
1822 - 1897 (75 years)
George Richard Crooks was an American Methodist minister, writer, and educator. Early career George Crooks was born in Philadelphia, the son of George R. Crooks, Sr. and Mary M. Crooks. He graduated from Dickinson College in 1840 at the age of 18, and, according to his yearbooks, his family was then residing in Adams, Illinois. Following graduation he undertook missionary work as a circuit rider in Illinois. He soon returned to Dickinson, and in the 1841-2 Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Dickinson College, Crooks is listed as "Tutor in Languages and Mathematics."
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Jacques Babinet
1794 - 1872 (78 years)
Jacques Babinet was a French physicist, mathematician, and astronomer who is best known for his contributions to optics. Biography His father was Jean Babinet and mother, Marie‐Anne Félicité Bonneau du Chesn. Babinet started his studies at the Lycée Napoléon, but was persuaded to abandon a legal education for the pursuit of science. A graduate of the École Polytechnique, which he left in 1812 for the Military School at Metz, he was later a professor at the Sorbonne and at the Collège de France. In 1840, he was elected as a member of the Académie Royale des Sciences. He was also an astronome...
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Michael Tombros
1889 - 1974 (85 years)
Michael Tombros was a Greek sculptor who was influential in introducing avant-garde styles into Greece. Life Michael Tombros was born in Athens in 1889, son of a marble sculptor from Korthio, Andros island. He attended the Athens School of Fine Arts from 1903 to 1909. He studied sculpture with Georgios Vroutos and Lazaros Sochos, and drawing with Dimitrios Geraniotis, Alexandros Kalloudis and Georgios Jakobides. He also worked at the marble sculpture workshop of N.M. Perakis. In 1910 he set up his own studio in Athens. In 1914 he obtained a scholarship from the estate of George Averoff which...
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